EWTN News reports that Apache Stronghold, a Native American group, has filed yet another legal challenge to halt the transfer of Oak Flat in Arizona to Resolution Copper, a mining company. The site is sacred to the Western Apaches. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Knights of Columbus have filed amicus briefs in support of the Apaches’ claim that the sale violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The article presents this as a straightforward religious liberty issue, with the Catholic “hierarchy” positioning itself as a defender of indigenous worship. What the article does not examine — and what demands ruthless exposure — is the theological absurdity and spiritual danger of Catholic authorities lending the weight of the Church’s name to the legal protection of pagan idolatry, all while the conciliar sect itself has abandoned the very concept of true worship.
The Idolatry of Oak Flat and the “Religious Freedom” Smokescreen
The article presents the Apache claim to Oak Flat in sympathetic terms: the site is “sacred,” the mining project would “destroy” it, and the legal battle is framed as one of “religious freedom.” The USCCB and the Knights of Columbus are portrayed as noble defenders of indigenous rights. But let us strip away the sentimental veneer and examine what is actually being defended.
Oak Flat is a site of pagan worship — a place where Apache tribes perform rituals to false gods, spirits, and created nature. The Catholic Church has always taught that latria — the worship due to God alone — must never be rendered to false deities. The First Commandment is unambiguous: “Thou shalt not have strange gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). The Church Fathers, the Councils, and the Magisterium have consistently condemned any cooperation with idolatry. St. Paul himself, in his address at the Areopagus, did not seek legal protection for pagan worship sites; he proclaimed the unknown God and called the Athenians to repentance (Acts 17:22-31).
The USCCB’s amicus brief argues that lower court decisions allowing the sale represent “a grave misunderstanding” of religious freedom law. But the true grave misunderstanding is the conciar sect’s own: it has so thoroughly absorbed the modernist doctrine of religious liberty — condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship”) — that it now actively defends the legal right of pagans to worship demons. This is not Catholic teaching; it is the logical terminus of the Vatican II declaration Dignitatis Humanae, which Pius IX explicitly condemned as heretical.
The 1852 Treaty: A Broken Covenant and a False Hope
The Apache lawsuit also alleges that the transfer violates the 1852 Treaty of Santa Fe. The article mentions this in passing, but the deeper question is: what moral or spiritual authority does a treaty with the United States government — a nation founded on Enlightenment principles, religious indifferentism, and the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples — have in the eyes of the Catholic Church? The article treats the treaty as a legitimate legal instrument whose violation is inherently unjust. But the Catholic understanding of justice is not grounded in secular contract law; it is grounded in the natural law as interpreted by the Church.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that “Christ reigns in the minds of men… because He Himself is Truth, and men must draw truth from Him and accept it obediently.” The Apache claim to Oak Flat is not a claim to the worship of the true God; it is a claim to the worship of false gods. No treaty, no federal law, and no court decision can make idolatry just. The USCCB’s defense of this claim is not an act of justice; it is an act of complicity with error.
The Knights of Columbus: From Catholic Fraternal Order to Legal Advocates for Paganism
The article notes that the Knights of Columbus filed a brief arguing that the decision to allow mining applies an “atextual constraint” to federal religious freedom law. This is a remarkable statement. The Knights of Columbus, once a bulwark of Catholic identity in America, have been so thoroughly captured by the conciliar revolution that they now deploy legal arguments to protect the religious practices of those who worship creatures rather than the Creator.
The Catholic position on religious freedom, as articulated by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832), is that the right to profess any religion is not a natural right but a license for error that the state may tolerate only to avoid a greater evil — never to promote or protect as a positive good. The Knights’ argument assumes the modernist premise that all religious claims are equally worthy of legal protection. This is precisely the indifferentism condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”).
The Silence That Condemns: What the Article Omits
The article is a masterwork of omission. There is no mention of the Catholic Church’s missionary obligation to convert the Apache people to the true faith. There is no acknowledgment that the worship practiced at Oak Flat is idolatry. There is no recognition that the USCCB’s actions represent a betrayal of the Church’s divine mandate. There is no reference to the teaching of Pope Leo XIII that “the reign of Christ… encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” (Quas Primas).
Instead, the article presents the conciliar “bishops” as champions of religious pluralism — a concept that every Pope before John XXIII condemned as incompatible with the Catholic faith. The article’s tone is one of approval: the Catholic “hierarchy” is doing good work, defending the little guy against corporate greed. But the Catholic Church does not exist to defend pagan worship; it exists to proclaim Christ the King and to bring all nations to the baptismal font.
The Deeper Apostasy: A Church That Defends Idols Has Abandoned God
The Oak Flat controversy is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the systemic apostasy that has consumed the conciliar sect since 1958. When the USCCB defends the religious freedom of pagans, it reveals that it has abandoned the Church’s supernatural mission. When the Knights of Columbus argue for the legal protection of idolatry, they demonstrate that they have embraced the modernist heresy of religious indifferentism.
Pope St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, warned that the Modernists would seek to “reconcile themselves, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” — a proposition condemned by Pope Pius IX as error number 80 of the Syllabus. The USCCB and the Knights of Columbus have done exactly this: they have reconciled themselves with the liberal order, and in doing so, they have betrayed Christ the King.
The true Catholic response to the Oak Flat situation would not be to file amicus briefs defending pagan worship. It would be to proclaim to the Apache people — and to all people — that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). It would be to offer them the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the sacraments, and the fullness of the Catholic faith. It would be to tell them that Oak Flat, however beautiful, is not sacred — that the only true sacred place on earth is the altar where Christ is truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
But the conciliar sect cannot do this, because it has lost the faith. It can only file legal briefs, issue press releases, and pretend that defending idolatry is an act of Catholic witness. It is not. It is an act of apostasy.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of Conciliar “Catholicism”
The article from EWTN News presents the Oak Flat controversy as a simple story of religious liberty and indigenous rights. But beneath the surface lies a profound spiritual tragedy: the leaders of the conciliar sect have so thoroughly embraced the errors of Modernism that they now defend the legal right of pagans to worship false gods. This is not Catholicism. This is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15).
The faithful who still profess the integral Catholic faith must reject this apostasy utterly. They must recognize that the USCCB, the Knights of Columbus, and the entire conciliar structure are not the Catholic Church — they are a paramasonic structure that has occupied the Vatican and perverted the Church’s mission. The true Church endures in the faithful who profess the unchanging faith, who offer the true Mass, and who recognize no king but Christ.
Oak Flat will be mined or it will not. But the spiritual destruction wrought by the conciliar sect’s defense of idolatry is far more devastating than any copper mine. It is the destruction of the Catholic soul — the replacement of supernatural faith with naturalistic humanism, of true worship with legal advocacy for paganism, of Christ the King with the liberal state.
Non possumus — we cannot accept this. We must return to the faith of the Fathers, the Councils, and the Popes who never compromised with error. We must reject the conciar sect and all its works, including its shameful defense of idolatry at Oak Flat.
Source:
Native American group backed by U.S. bishops seeks court review of sacred site sale (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.04.2026